“I’m taking the bus,” I say.
“Derrick—” Claudia says.
But I’m gone and she doesn’t follow me. I look back once and see her and Brynn looking at each other and saying stuff and shrugging and then Claudia gets in the car and drives toward Tommy’s house.
2
I get off the bus and head for the closest bathroom. Ten seconds later I’ve got the hazmat suit on and heading for my locker, legit stopping traffic. Brock and Tommy are there and stare with their mouths open. Lots of kids whisper and smirk, but I don’t care because this is the best I’ve felt at school in a long time.
Ready.
We say the pledge in homeroom but mostly everybody is looking at me instead of the flag. Mrs. Simons, my first- period algebra teacher, takes attendance and then the phone rings. She walks over and says real quiet, “Mr. Killroy wants to see you.”
I walk down and head straight into his office.
“I don’t want to talk,” I say.
“Good.” He shuts the door and says, “Because it’s my turn. What are you wearing?”
“It’s a hazmat suit.”
“For the apocalypse,” he says.
“How’d you know?”
“Your dad and I talk pretty regularly, Derrick—including this morning when I called him about your outfit. I know about your doomsday prepping.” He waits. “I know about the shed.”
My stomach knots and I’m seeing him bum-rush the shed—blowing right through the side and ripping all my bins out. Eating my stuff right there in the yard like a grizzly bear.
“So are you going to suspend me or what?” I ask.
“No.”
“So can I go back to class?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That suit is a distraction to every student and teacher.” He leans forward, and I think he’s going rip it off. “But not me. You’ll stay next door in the guidance conference room until you decide to change. I’ll email your teachers to send work down.”
“Why don’t you just send me home?”
“Your dad asked me not to.”
Ugh. Big shocker.
“But that’s not really why I called you down.” He leans back. “I got a call from Misty Knoll’s mom this morning.”
I play with the elastic cuffs of the suit. “Uh-huh.”
“She’s refusing to come to school today, and her parents thought maybe you would know why.”
“She’s probably watching the Princess Diaries. Or Jet Skiing on the Delaware.”
“What?”
“I don’t know why she’s not here.” I shrug. “She’s off, okay. Way off. Like on another planet, in some other galaxy. She’s basically an alien from another dimension.”
“So you’re still not friends.”
“I told you: We just live near each other.”
“Her mom said you’ve been spending a lot of time together.” Mr. Killroy lowers his voice. “Maybe you’re more than friends? But now you’re not?”
“Ugh. No.” Seriously. “Can’t people just hang out and not like each other?”
“So you’ve been hanging out?”
I think about that stupid index card she wrote. How she put me in her DONE box like the stupid bass cello. “We used to hang out. We won’t anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s a Real Jerk. She wasn’t my friend two weeks ago, and she’s not my friend now.”
3
Mrs. Ruth comes into the guidance conference room at 2:10 and says, “Time to go, Derrick.”
I grab my book bag and walk by Mr. Killroy’s office. Empty. “To class?”
Then I see Claudia across the entryway, signing something in the main office. She waves at the secretaries and walks through the doors over to us. “Hey.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Dr. Mike had a cancellation.”
I shrug and walk out to the car. Better than sitting here another minute.
We drive twenty minutes through a ton of traffic and pull into a big shopping center. Dr. Mike’s head-examiner office is in this medical building that looks like a giant bank. We walk through automatic sliding doors and pass a bunch of kid doctor offices, winding our way to a big waiting area with glass windows. My dad is already there, chatting with Dr. Mike. They both check out the hazmat suit but pretend not to.
“Hey, Derrick,” Dr. Mike says. He looks the same: not really short or tall or fat or skinny. Still bald and probably still forty-something. “Good to see you again, buddy. You’re huge.”
“Yeah.”
He opens another door and we follow him to his office. I sit in my normal chair across from a tiny couch and throw my feet up on the coffee table. He’s added two more chairs on the ends of it where my dad and Claudia sit.
“Okay,” Dr. Mike says. “Let’s talk ground rules. Derrick: I’m not here to tell your dad or sister about our discussions, and they won’t ask. Think of it like a completely separate thing. Think of us all as a new collective group, which might overlap with some of what you and I talked about before. Make sense?”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“Let’s start simple: How did you feel about them asking to do this session?”
“It’s fine.”
“You agreed, so I assume you don’t object.”
I lean back and look at the ceiling. No watermark here. But there’s something else. “What’s that?”
He looks up. Everybody does. “What?”
My stomach feels weird. I point to a four-inch hole right above my head. Or is it six? “That.”
“Oh—yeah. Maintenance guys replaced all the lights down here, something about efficiency ratings. They broke that one and had to take the whole housing out.”
I stare at it for a while. “Hmm.”
“So you don’t object,” Dr. Mike says.
“What?”
“To this session.”
I swallow. Look away from the hole and play with my hazmat zipper. “It’s fine.”
“Okay.” Dr. Mike looks at my dad and says, “Luke: You requested this session. Why don’t you start.”
After a long pause he says, “I need to apologize to my kids.”
It’s like a NOT BORED switch goes on inside me. I stare at him.
An apology.
Now we’re talking.
“Apologize for what?” Dr. Mike asks.
“A couple things,” he says. “I guess the first one is, I haven’t been a very good parent since Laura passed.”
“How so?”
He clears his throat. “I haven’t been on top of things—parenting wise. Getting a sense of how they’re doing with everything. I let them do their thing. I really backed off.”
“You gave them significant independence,” Dr. Mike says.
“But not in a good way.”
“How so?”
He looks at the floor. “For one thing, I’ve let my daughter become the live-in maid. I didn’t want it like that—Laura would kill me if she were here, because we shared those jobs. Laundry, dishes, cleaning—all of it. But I just let Claudia take them on.”
“Dad.” She reaches over and puts a hand on his arm.
I eye-roll because let’s just get to the good stuff—the real reason he needs to apologize.
“I’m their father. I’m supposed to protect them when life turns bad. Support them—not disappear.” He rubs his face so hard it sounds like somebody sanding a piece of wood. “This past year, I feel like I took their normal teenage life away—Claudia especially. And I feel awful.”
Claudia wipes her eyes. He grabs her hand and they fumble for the right grip.
“Anything else?” Dr. Mike asks.
I sit up and lean forward a little. I w
ish we were filming this.
Here.
We.
Go.
“I let the shed go too far,” he says. “I helped Derrick get this way.”
It’s silent, and then there’s a ringing in my ear. I try to yell but can’t get the words out—the Great Red Spot is sucking up all my air.
“I knew you were on those blogs,” he says to me. “I let you use my credit card for the subscription. I just let it happen. I let it keep happening.” He shakes his head. “And the shed—I shouldn’t have let you change it. I’m your father, and I’m supposed to protect you, and I just enabled you. I didn’t confront you or even try to help. I just let you build it. Everything that’s happening with you is my fault.”
“You’re sorry about the shed?” My voice is shaking. Hands buzzing and heading for my face. I’m standing now, towering over him, and Dr. Mike is looking at me like Oh no. “The shed isn’t the problem—it’s a solution,” I shout. “You’re the problem—you going out with every lady on eHarmony. That’s the problem.”
“Derrick!” Claudia yells.
“Stop defending him.” I want to punch him so bad—a hundred times more than at the cemetery. Hit him in his stupid face like boom boom boom, but I’m not sure I could because this room is starting to slant pretty hard to one side. “And you’re not touching the shed. It’s mine. I built it with my own money, and you’re not gonna touch it.”
His hand is over his eyes now, like he’s hiding his face. “Derrick.”
“You—”
And now I’m cold, like ice. Super-dizzy and my heart is like skipping beats or something and going way too fast. In my head I see construction guys and bulldozers and hear the beep-beep-beep of their trucks backing onto our lawn.
“What did you do?” I ask.
He doesn’t move.
“What did you do?” I say again, but it sounds like a really little kid, way littler than me, who is about to cry.
“Son—”
“What did you do to my shed?”
But I know what he did. He had one of his work buddies come over during our family therapy and tear it down. He planned this—he planned this whole thing so he could take down my stuff.
All my work.
Gone.
All my prep.
Gone.
My chances of surviving.
Gone.
“I didn’t do anything,” he says, real quiet. He’s crying.
He reaches for me, but I back away and grab my chest because it’s thudding hard like ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. I’m panting like a wild animal and Dr. Mike is saying Breathe, Derrick, breathe and I slouch back in my chair, that black hole in the ceiling staring down at me.
1
“Derrick.”
I sit up in bed, real quick. The hazmat suit is stuck to me like I went swimming. “What’s happening?”
“You were yelling,” my dad says.
I look at my watch. 3:48 a.m. I unzip the suit. “So hot.”
“Bad dream?”
I shrug.
He sits on the end of the bed. “You remember what it was about?”
I can guess. “No.”
“You okay?”
“Gonna get a drink.”
I go to the bathroom and down some water. My hair is smashed against my forehead. I definitely smell bad. Good thing I got a couple of these suits, because this one needs to be washed.
My dad comes to the door and says, “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
He stands there a couple more seconds. “I wouldn’t just tear it down,” he says. “Do you think I would do that to you?”
“I don’t know.” When we got home from Dr. Mike’s, the shed was still there. But that doesn’t mean it will be there tomorrow.
“I’m not going to do that. I wouldn’t just do that.”
“Okay.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder and just leaves it there. I let him and it feels kind of good, his big giant hand, gripping me hard. Not hurting but almost, like if I wanted to get away I’d have some trouble. “Night, son.”
I hear a door shut. But it’s weird because he went the wrong way—toward the steps. His room is at the back of the house. That’s the big one. The master.
I go into the hallway. There’s light coming from the guest room, by the steps, and then it cuts out. I hear a bed creaking and then it’s quiet.
I look the other way and I’m walking before I know it. I creep to the master bedroom and open the door.
It’s neater than a hotel room—nothing out of place. It’s like nobody sleeps here. There’s a picture of Her on his side of the bed. I can’t really see the whole thing in the dark, which is good.
He doesn’t sleep here.
How long has this been going on?
I go back to my room and push the earth until I’m sweaty again. I change into a fresh hazmat suit and fall asleep on the floor, holding my go bag.
2
Mrs. Ruth puts two cookies on the guidance office conference table next to me.
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“Everybody likes cookies. Especially mine.”
They do look amazing. I eat one.
She leaves and I pretend to do Mrs. Baker’s science project. Really I’m checking my phone for the Poop Master 5000 delivery update and looking at my weather app.
Around eleven I get a notification from UPS. Your package has been delivered. I jump up and cheer, probably too loud, because Mr. Killroy knocks on the door and opens it.
“Got a visitor,” he says.
Brock walks in with two lunch trays. It’s pizza and he slides one to me. “It’s pizza.”
“Yeah.”
Mr. Killroy leaves and shuts the door.
We eat pizza and look at each other and then look away real quick. I watch the clock and wonder when he’s going to talk, because I’m not planning on it. It was nice of him to buy lunch, but that doesn’t make him not a Real Big Jerkface.
“Sorry I threw a big piece of wood at your shed,” he says.
“It’s fine.”
After a while he says, “Tommy has a game today. It’s a home game, and it’s right after school. You should come.”
“Hmm.”
“You need to come. You don’t even have to stay the whole time. Just for the first half and see him play.”
“My toilet just got delivered. I have to go home and set it up in the shed.”
“I thought you already got it.”
“They didn’t have it in the store. I had to get it online.”
Brock taps his fingers on the table. “I get that you’re messed up because of everything with your mom. That sucks. It really does, and I get that I don’t know how bad.”
“I can’t come.”
“You need to.”
“I can’t.” I slide the tray at him, trying to bang it into his.
He stops it with his big giant arm and just leaves it there, trapped against the table like the million bugs he’s murdered. “He’s your best friend, Dee. Don’t you get it?” He gets up and stacks our trays together with a smack. “Just come to his game with me, hold a sign, and scream. Witness him with me. This is the coolest thing he’s ever done.”
“You’ll be there.”
“He wants you there,” Brock says. Pretty much yells. “Dude. He worships you. You’re bigger and tougher than him and you’re always building stuff. And now he’s got this one thing and he wants to show you. Are you getting this?”
“I can’t go,” I say, but it’s weak and lame. The pizza and cookie are mixing up with all the knots in my gut. I’m over the fifty percent mark now, I can feel it.
I have become a Real Jerk.
Mr. Killroy opens the door. “Time for cl
ass, Brock.”
He walks to the door, but then comes over to me. He looks me right in the eye and says, “If something happens to Pete, I’m going to bring the thunder.”
3
I get off the bus and see the toilet box by the garage when I’m still way far away.
I sprint the rest of the way like I’m in the Olympics. This is it. For real—the actual last thing. In an hour, maybe less, the shed will be done.
I’ll be ready.
“Hey!” I shout, because Misty is coming off our front stoop and heading for the package. “Don’t touch it.”
“I was just watching it, until you came home.” Her eyes are red and her hair is sticking out all over the place under her hat.
“I’m here. So you can go.” I start dragging the box around the house. It’s really heavy, and then it’s light all of a sudden.
Misty’s picked up the other end.
“You’re not my assistant anymore,” I say.
She doesn’t answer.
Whatever.
We get to the shed and I tear open the box. It’s mostly assembled, just the battery has to go in.
“Looks cool,” she says.
I get out my screwdriver and open the battery port. “Why are you even here?”
“I was feeling pretty bad about what I did. I acted like the Biggest Jerk Ever.”
I slide the lithium rectangle in and screw the plate back on. There’s supposed to be a special liner for the toilet, but I don’t see it. Misty finds it under a piece of cardboard and hands it to me.
“Shouldn’t you be watching the Princess Diaries or something?” I ask.
Misty goes to talk but some hair flies in her mouth. She tucks it under her hat. “I watched them all last night.”
“Another one for the DONE box,” I say. “You could probably do a couple more in the time you’re wasting here. Maybe do a back flip.”
“I’m sorry—okay?”
“Whatever.”
“Okay listen: Have you ever seen those videos of people seeing color for the first time?”
“What?”
Misty shuts the toilet lid so I can’t put the liner on. “They make these special glasses that let color-blind people see color. And you know what all the people do at that exact moment when they put them on? When they see color? They cry, Derrick.”
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